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Morally it's akin to pretending to be someone known to someone and then having an email, fax, sms or phone conversation while pretending to be that person.
He may not have distributed or sold the MSS, but it was certainly obtaining copies of them fraudulently. Thus he could be said to have stolen MSS.
The prosecution is for "wire fraud" as remote fraud via email contacts was involved. That kind of offence was invented due to fraud on wired telegraphs in USA, but the first instances of telegraphic fraud involved share dealing in Europe via semaphore telegraph (Terry Pratchett's Clacks was real before wired telegraphy was invented).
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